What’s the Difference Between "Open Terminal" and "Pop Out Terminal," and Can I Force "Open Terminal"

I’ve noticed in Cursor IDE that sometimes I see “Open terminal” and sometimes “Pop out terminal” as options in the chat pane when executing commands.

For example, “Open terminal” seems to open a shell tab at the top of the central panel, which looks like a file, while “Pop out terminal” runs within the chat pane.

Can someone explain:

  1. What’s the difference between “Open terminal” and “Pop out terminal”?
  2. What determines which one appears?
  3. Is there a way to force “Open terminal” behaviour?

I’d love to hear how others manage this in their workflow or if the devs can clarify the configuration options. Thanks!

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Further to the above…

Cursor 0.49.x added “Improved agent terminal control”:

We’ve added more control for you over terminals started by the agent. Commands can now be edited before they run, or skipped entirely. We’ve also renamed “Pop-out” to “Move to background” to better reflect what it does.

This is better but it “randomly” opens a new terminal in the Terminal Pane and sometime in the Editor Pane. I favour the Editor Pane.

How can I ensure it does the latter?